Gods of the Game #3, Chapter 8

Available Apex Zone Armor abilities.

■      Shadowed: Generates a low-spectrum distortion field that bends light and muffles sound, making the wearer far more difficult to detect.

■      Brawling: Augments servo feedback and kinetic reinforcement, dramatically increasing the force and precision of unarmed strikes.

■      Radiant: Channels stored energy into a blinding flare that erupts from the armor’s surface, overwhelming enemy optics for several seconds.

■      Unbound: Reduces local gravitational influence through controlled vector dampening, granting enhanced agility and hang time.

■      Adaptive: Continuously analyzes incoming attack signatures and reconfigures plating density to resist the last damage type received.

■      Momentum Shift: Employs gravitic impulse bursts to allow instantaneous changes in direction without loss of speed or stability.

■      Invisibility: Activates full-spectrum light cancellation, rendering the wearer unseen until they attack or sustain a hit.

■      Aegis: Projects a self-sustaining barrier field that absorbs a fixed quota of incoming damage before collapsing in a radiant pulse.

■      Blink: Replicates the Jäger Hopper’s spatial-fold engine, allowing a brief phase jump or extending an existing hop mid-flight.

Charoen forced himself to slow down and read the list once, twice, and then a final third time. Too many attractive options. Any one of them would be a legitimate boon on the field. However, he had to synergize with his selections thus far. Shock and Conductive both augmented and extended the range of his lightning lance. Berserker and Centering should theoretically augment and extended Berserker’s brutal enhancement of his offensive output. Speed was just an all-round benefit.

What them, given that setup, should he choose?

He could cavil and pick something defensive at long last. Aegis or Adaptive. Or he could focus on the assassin aspect of his role with Shadowed or Invisibility. Conversely, he could change his armor into an offensive weapon with Radiant.

But what really caught his attention were the mobility focused powers. Unbound, Momentum Shift, and Blink.

Enhanced agility, the ability to maintain speed while shifting vectors, or extending his jäger hops.

Momentum Shift would have paired well with Gravitational Well and Telekinetic Barrier. But the synergy between Blink and Conductive was too alluring to ignore. Combined, they’d extend his lethal range beyond anything his enemies would expect, allowing his Berserker and Shock enhanced strikes to play a more significant role.

That felt right.

Charoen made his selection.

“It’s done,” said Virgil. “What do you think, Coach?”

“He’s gone the simple but lethal route.” Sindre was intrigued despite himself. “Given Berserker, that’s for the best. That state of mind doesn’t lend itself to refined strategy.”

“A feral dog,” said Virgil, expression staid, prim, disappointed. “That’s what we’ve ended up with.”

“A feral tiger,” corrected Carmine.

Charoen began removing the armor. “I want to experiment with my new powers.”

Sindre snorted. “You don’t even know how to use your turbine boots.”

“Plus I’m getting concerned messages from Dr. Bierhals,” smiled Virgil. “Time for your nappy-nap.”

“I can learn. You probably had Catori lined up to teach me, right?”

“Clever boy,” agreed Virgil. “Shall I ping her?”

“Yeah.” He wouldn’t need his actual gear in the VMU field. “Tell her I’ll be waiting.”

And he strode out of Locker 5, past the three men and back out into the big field. He moved with slow deliberation. It was easy to second-guess himself. Charoen—the dead man—wouldn’t have made the same choices. Already he’d distinguished himself, ended that continuity. The other Charoen would no doubt have chosen something more cerebral. Perhaps Momentum Shift and Cruel to synergize with his Speed and Ominous/Bane combination.

But that man was dead.

Charoen stared at his smooth, delicate palms again as he walked. That man was dead, and this one wanted to wreak vengeance and havoc in his name.

Was that true? He came to a stop by his VMU suit. If so, what was he avenging? His unwitting rebirth? That fault lay with Virgil alone, not with the anonymous Premiere League teams he was due to fight. But within himself he felt an unreasoning anger.

Whence this fury?

Charoen stared out at nothing. He was two beings. One calm, detached, collected. The other a frenzying, rabid beast. The separation no doubt attested to some kind of psychic break within him. Some inability to integrate his psyche. Numbness and fury couldn’t, should be the only sides of his emotional coin.

But it’s what he had.

Perhaps the vat process hadn’t been perfect after all.

Or maybe he was right to be angry. Angry at this world he’d been born into. A world of self-satisfied power brokers who played with the lives of the millions of regular folks as if they were tools. Men and women like Virgil who married sadism with self-convinced righteousness, and imperturbable conviction that they possessed a divine mandate to do as they willed, no matter the cost or emotional fallout of their actions. To live in a world where the very best of his talent and ability and effort served only to amuse those born rich. Where he could only dream, at best, of being a tool in someone else’s hand. Where he’d never had a chance to truly determine his own future, only the false dichotomy of serving special interests or opting out into poverty and slow starvation.

Charoen curled his fingers into fists.

A world ruined by generations of the powerful and greedy. A world whose central belt was now a parched and sun-seared wasteland, inhospitable to humanity, where ancient cities were bleached, old roads had bubbled and oozed out of line, where countless animal species had gone extinct, ecosystems collapsing as humanity had been forced to retreat to the poles.

It had been men like Virgil who had fucked over the world, and now men like Virgil were convinced they were the only ones who could fix it.

He was blind to his own inheritance of arrogance and destructive conviction. And assuredly, if it were pointed out to him, Virgil would only laugh.

Charoen wasn’t of this world. Perhaps no Echoes could be. He was born on the other side of the dark mirror, and with the right perspective, he could see humanity and its actions as truly ‘other’, the blind instinctive actions of a species that couldn’t elevate itself beyond the tribal priorities of their chimpanzee cousins.

What did most people truly desire? Sex, belonging, and comfort. Creature comforts.

What did ambitious people desire? Extreme amounts of the same. All the sex, money, and comfort. Which could only be achieved through power. Power and money.

Charoen felt a chill as he a gulf widened in his heart between him and humanity. For every Clovinn with a big heart and crooked smile there was Virgil with his grasping megalomania and willingness to hurt anyone and everyone in order to achieve his ambitions.

The pity of it was that the Virgil’s of the world were the ones who decided the course of history, not the Clovinn’s.

Did this mean it was Charoen’s duty to refuse Virgil? To walk away from krieg chess, and refuse to be his tool?

Charoen raised his face to the caged lights and closed his eyes.

He could cut his throat right here and now. Spill his arterial blood out over the blue rubber floor. Virgil would be pissed, but pissed in the same manner a farmer might be angry if a prized steer got its head stuck in a fence and broke its own neck.

For a long moment Charoen stood perfectly still, contemplating.

He didn’t want to die, he realized. Not yet. Maybe soon. But for now, there were certain pleasures to be enjoyed. Even if only for a moment. The thrill of flying. The contest of his own wits and might against other players.

But.

What mattered was that he didn’t further Virgil’s plans. Thus, if he killed himself before a critical game—the finals, say—he’d foil Virgil’s cruel ambitions while still getting to savor a little of life while he had it.

Very well.

He’d play a couple of games, see how that felt, flex his abilities, and then, when the time was right, he’d cut his own throat.

Charoen pursed his lips and nodded grimly.

That felt like the right move.

“You all right there, Charoen?”

Catori.

She’d already donned Brutal Deluxe’s metallic orange bodysuit. It hugged her athletic, rangy frame. Where Fireball was compact, muscular, and coiled for explosive speed, and Samira was massive, brutal, and immovably solid, Catori was built like a bow drawn to its limit: long, lithe, and tensile, every muscle tuned for precision, balance, and flight.

“Fine,” he allowed.

She came to a stop and eyed him warily, but reined in her skepticism. “Better suit up, then.”

He did so. When the VMU helmet sealed with his suit, the training complex disappeared in favor of an arena of Catori’s selection. They stood upon a blue field whose lines were inlaid in glowing silver. Empty stadium seating encircled them and rose to a great height. The air was cool, the sky overhead perfectly dark.

Simple, stark, and vivid.

Catori had appeared in her jäger gear. Her orange bodysuit was now only visible where the Reaver half-plate didn’t cover it. The hopper pack exhaust pipes extended above her shoulders, while her feet were encased in her mighty turbine boots.

“When Virgil told me I was to teach you how to be a jäger, I was… skeptical.” Catori’s expression mirrored her words. “You’ve been—or were—an opfern from day one. Being a jäger is a completely different mindset, requires different strategies, different everything.”

“I know.” Charoen navigated the menu that appeared in his vision and selected standard jäger gear, minus the helm and lightning lance. An identical half-plate suit and pair of turbine boots manifested around him.

Catori sighed. “We’ll take this one step at a time, I guess. This whole—” She cut herself off, mouth compressing into a bitter line, then shook her head sharply. “Never mind. Irrelevant. First things first. You can walk in turbine boots, but it’s akin to walking in skis. Very clumsy. Only do so if you’ve no choice.”

Charoen examined his massive boots. They had no flex built into them, were rigid from toe to knee, and massive so as to incorporate the four turbines. He took a step, and found it less challenging than he’d assumed. Perhaps it was his A8 Strength rating. But it did indeed feel clumsy. If pressed he could probably break into a rollicking jog, but…

“Obviously, our preferred means of getting around is flight. The amount of power in your boots is enough to launch you through a wall, but fortunately advanced tech prevents us from getting into too much trouble. They receiving continuous feedback from our armor’s motion sensors to counter-vector exhaust modulation to stabilize pitch, yaw, and roll in real time. Effectively, your boots will think faster than you can fall, making the act of flying feel instinctive.”

Charoen nodded appreciatively. “How do I command them?”

Catori smirked. “Thought activated. Literally. Engage your gamma, and then will yourself to rise. Given how dumb some jägers are in the bandit league, it couldn’t be any more complicated than that.”

Charoen exhaled, cleared his mind of thoughts, and then floundered. Rise, he commanded. Fly? Up!

His turbine boots rumbled, a deep thrum rising through his legs. Catori, one dark brow quirked, rose smoothly into the air, both boots remaining level.

“It often takes new jägers a week or so to get used to their boots,” she explained. “It’s not just a question of gamma, but how well you can interface with the boot system itself. It requires focused visualization and—”

Charoen tuned her out, closed his eyes, and imagined himself rising into the air. It felt like there was a large but simple puzzle piece edge before him, invisible yet definite. He just needed to fit himself to it. To interface.

Rise, he commanded again. Forced himself to grow calm, and then visualized himself in perfect detail simply ascending into the air.

The thrumming in the huge boots picked up a notch and the floor seemed to ripple beneath him. Charoen lowered his chin, banished impatience, and brought a fierce focus to bear. That huge puzzle piece was a psychic pressure, a way of thinking, of shaping his gamma, perhaps—

Rise, he whispered in his mind, and the boots thrummed, hiccupped, and then his whole body swayed. It felt abruptly as if he stood upon greased glass, his boots slipping minutely from side to side, and with a jolt of panic he opened his eyes and saw that he’d lifted a good foot off the ground.

“Well…” Catori was staring, clearly taken aback. “That’s… yeah. OK. Or you could just make it work right away.”

The sensation of standing on slick marble hadn’t gone away. His boots were jacking out left and right. He’d only risen a foot or so, but still he felt a spike of triumph.

Catori drifted closer. “All right, the way your boots are moving? They’re compensating for your instability. You need to strengthen your core. Think of it like ice skating on wet ice. Have you ever ice skated?”

“No,” said Charoen.

“Best thing you can do right now is move. Pick a direction, and will yourself to ascend. At first, think in terms of curved pathways. Relax into the movement, let your intuition guide you. Like this.”

And Catori moved forward into a gentle curve, boots rising up to her left as she moved in a slow arc to the right.

Charoen nodded to himself, took a deep breath, and glared straight ahead.

Forward.

The boots were smart. Instead of just jerking forward so that inertia would drag the rest of him back, they dipped so that he reflexively leaned forward, then thrust into the soles of his feet so he surged ahead.

Speed reduced the slipperiness, so, knowing he was in the VMU, he urged the boots to go faster.

They obliged.

With a whoop he flew across the pitch, arms occasionally windmilling for balance, and when he willed himself to curve to the left, the boots rose to the right, centripetal force keeping him at an angle as he glided around, his whole body tensed as he marveled at the experience.

“There you go!” Catori’s earlier skepticism had been replaced by her own enthusiasm for the sport. “This all becomes reflexive in time. Where you want to go, the boots will take you. For now, just try doing some figure-8’s, tighten the curve.”

Charoen nodded as he willed himself to come out of the curve to the left and break to the right. The boots slid down and back beneath him, then up along the right as if on an invisible racing track, and Charoen’s body tilted right in response so that he began curving out wide in the opposite direction.

But you couldn’t win a krieg chess match by flying in long, graceful curves. Still feeling tense, he willed the curve to tighten and the boots to accelerate.

They rose up higher on the left as they burst forward, dropping back a little and tilting him into position again. The curve grew tight; he whipped around and found himself trapped in a large circle, body nearly horizontal to the ground.

Take it easy! laughed Catori over the comm. What are you—ease out of that, you’re going to—

Exhilaration and panic had Charoen by the throat. The world was spinning around him, the air rushing past, the boots causing his whole body to vibrate. Around and around he went, and with a shout he broke the cycle and willed himself to rise up out of the vortex he’d created.

Up he flew, his whole body wobbling as the boots sought to compensate for his inexperience, arms waving, and then he was going up, up into the featureless sky.

Inhaling deeply, unable to resist the urge to grin, Charoen flattened his arms by his side and stared upward as he shot higher and higher. It felt like standing on the world’s smallest elevator platform, his feet encased in pure kinetic fury, the ground falling away so that he could take the whole pitch at a glance.

Then the boots abruptly ceased their ascent, and he jerked to a stop only to idle at a set height, slowly sliding to the left and turning in place.

What happened? he said to Catori over the comms as she followed him up.

You’ve reached the field ceiling. The boots are programmed to only ascend as high as the pitch allows. Varies by field, but this one’s set at seventy-five yards.

Oh. He considered. Makes sense. You ever go this high?

She slowed and came to a stop before him, floating gently backward with enviable confidence and grace. “Rarely a reason to, unless a hellseherin makes a break for it. The more inexperienced hellseherins sometimes think that hiding in the uppermost corners is the best way to go.”

“It’s not?”

“They cut off their mobility, trap themselves in the corner. Smart players always ensure they’ve got all their possible exits open. Even out in the open like you’re pinned against the ceiling.”

Charoen nodded. “Makes sense.”

“Well, since you seem so intent on breaking all the learning guidelines, why don’t we skip to a slightly more advanced exercise?” Catori grinned. “All you need to do is follow me, all right? Try to stay five or so yards behind.”

“Deal.”

Catori raised a hand to give an ironic wave, tipped over sideways, and simply fell away. Charoen startled and urged himself to follow, the boots already feeling like part of his identity. At first he simply dropped boots first, but that wasn’t nearly fast enough; Catoria was already some twenty yards below, watching him as she fell back-first toward the ground.

He had to tilt forward.

Had to dive.

It was surprisingly difficult to will his body to fall in such manner. Survival instincts honed over the course of countless thousands of generations worked against him, urging him to remain upright.

Charoen clenched his jaw and ignored them. Fell forward, the boots sliding up behind him, so that abruptly he was horizontal and dropping like a stone. Arms wide, boots on idle, he fell after Catori who smirked, spun in place so that she was face down, and shot off sideways like a rocket.

“Fuck,” grimaced Charoen, and urged the boots to do the same. They fired, but Catori was off to one side; his attempt to turn and accelerate sent him into a chaotic tumble of limbs and rotations he rapidly lost control of; the boots sought to correct his fall, but he couldn’t help second- guessing them, such that each time one leg swerved out to correct he’d overcompensate or fight it.

The ground was rushing up toward him at full speed. With a shout he covered his head with his arms, and slammed into the blue turf.

The pain was minimal, nothing like it’d be in a real match. He lay there outstretched upon the ground as Catori landed smoothly beside him, eyebrow raised again.

“Interesting technique,” she said.

A range of evocative responses suggested themselves, but Charoen bit them back and climbed to his feet. It was an awkward process with the huge boots, but soon he was on his feet.

“Again,” he said.

“Impressive. Most people freak out after their first bad fall. But very well. After me, young apprentice.”

This time she took it easy on him. Remained vertical, eased forward, and then into a series of sinuous curves that he could just barely manage to execute so as to remain on her tail. Back and forth, around and back, and with ever quicker darts to the side to test his reflexes.

Time lost all meaning.

He became attuned to Catori’s figure, his boots obeying him with greater facility with each curve, each dip, each gentle rise.

You’re a natural! Catori’s amazement was clear even over the comms. Let’s go a little faster!

Now she began to bring in the vertical plane in earnest. She’d break out of a curve to shoot upward, only to fall off to one side and drop. Pull up into another curve, make it ever tighter so that it became a spiral, then burst upward at the last in rapid ascent.

Charoen found himself grinned. He couldn’t help it. He was good at this. The boots now felt like a part of him, and with each passing moment he found flight more intuitive. Confidence led to great mastery, and the more he asked of the boots, the more they delivered.

Soon he and Catori were playing tag in earnest, and while she remained clearly more advanced than him, his willingness to engage in ever more daring stunts drew surprised laughter or hurried curses from her in turn.

It was deliriously fun.

Finally Catori called an end to the game, and they both landed on the blue field and removed their helms, quitting the VMU.

Catori’s brow was sheened with sweat, and she carefully pulled a dark strand of hair away from where it had stuck across the bridge of her nose. “That was not bad.”

“Not bad?” He knew she was teasing him. “I thought you said I was a natural.”

She closed one eye as she surveyed him. “Well… close enough that there’s no difference. All right, fine. I don’t think I’ve ever witnessed someone take so quickly to flight. Myself included, and I thought I was a prodigy. Even your sister took a week to master her mörderin flight.”

Charoen’s smile slipped away at the thought of Jessie, and Catori’s smile fell.

“Ah. Sorry. Still.” She tucked her helm under one arm. “Well done. Sindre’s scheduled us for two hours of flight practice each day. I reckon you’ll be in great shape within a couple of weeks.”

“A couple of weeks?” He frowned. “I thought I was already practically there.”

“Oh no! No, no, no. Gentle swooping through the air? You’ve got that down. But combat is a completely different game. One of the hardest skills to master is controlling a fall after you take a hit. That takes practice and experience. We’ll do another handful of days of tag, then when you’re ready, we’ll introduce pugil sticks padded at both ends and begin some easy combat training.”

“Great.” He found himself eager. “When do I get to experiment with the hopper packs?”

“My god, there’s no stopping you!” Her grin was wide. “That’s last. First the boots, then your lightning lance, then the hopper pack. Say, three weeks from now, or earlier if you surprise me. You need to master the fundamentals before you start hopping.”

Charoen frowned.

“Cheer up!” She punched him in the shoulder as she walked past him. “Don’t tell me you’re tired of flying already?”

Charoen snorted and looked down at his feet. He’d half expected to see the jäger boots there, but only saw the VMU suit of course.

“No,” he said softly. “I don’t think I’m going to tire of flying anytime soon.”

“Then come on.” Catori was heading toward the VMU pegs. “Let’s shower, get some lunch, rest up. This afternoon we’ll get back to it. We’ve only a month after all to prepare you for the Premiere League.”

He jogged after her and began unseaming his suit. “You think that’s possible?”

She paused, one arm already pulled free. “Honestly? If you’d asked me this morning? Absolutely not. Maybe you could go up against a terrible bandit-league team and not embarrass yourself, but Solar-ranked jägers from the Premiere? No chance.”

Charoen watched her carefully. “And now?”

“After seeing how quickly you took to flying?” She resumed climbing out of her VMU suit. “I’d say there’s an infinitesimal chance you’ll survive your first game.”

“Infinitesimal?”

“Hey,” she grinned. “That’s literally not nothing. Which is far better than I’d expected. Keep surprising me, though, and maybe I’ll raise it to a just absolutely terrible chance.”

“Ha,” he said, and stepped out of his suit. “Well, there’s one way to find out.”

“One way indeed.” Catori hung up her suit and considered him.

“What?” he asked, hanging up his own suit in turn.

“Nothing. Forget about it. Let’s go eat.” And she turned to walk toward the exit.

Charoen watched her go for a moment, sighted up at the heights of the training complex where he’d been flying just a few moments ago, then jogged after.